Justin Broadrick was 15 years old when he first changed the landscape of heavy metal. A social misfit inspired by anarcho-punks Crass and the sonic terrorism of industrial originators Throbbing Gristle, he was conscripted into Napalm Death as guitarist in 1985. He appeared on the first side of their 1987 debut album, Scum, a record that helped lay down the template for grindcore, and has remained a lodestone for adrenaline-fuelled agitators ever since.
“Ninety-five per cent of the A-side of Scum was my music,” he says. “I was sitting in my bedroom in a council estate in Birmingham, writing riff after riff after riff. I was a weird machine. If I think back to it, it was always this endless river of sound. I have to stop myself from creating. You see how many projects I’ve got, it’s ridiculous. And for me, it’s the tip of an iceberg. I would release way more if I knew I wasn’t suffocating people with my music.”
